Dante's Inferno

Taken from an 13th century epic poem written by Dante Alighieri, Dante's Inferno follows a man's journey through the nine circles of hell - armed with Death's scythe and huge balls. Along the way you will combat demons, unbaptised evil babies and some of the more well known faces of Hell's inhabitants.

It tells the tale of of Dante who comes home to find his wife Beatrice murdered and her spirit then dragged to hell because of a mistake Dante has made. Dante gets stabbed and when death comes to collect him, Dante decides he's not ready to die and kills Death and takes his Scythe. Although I found this a little far fetched, I found it quite epic and it kind of set the tone.

Dante's Inferno is a 'Hack n Slash' game and it reminded me of the Lord of the Ring games on the Playstation 2 and Xbox. The game had different combos that you could perform with your scythe, each to different effect. Dante is also equipped with a holy cross which emits a cross shapped beam of energy that you could used as a ranged weapon. This cross was apparently Beatrice's, but as to how it shoots holy beams is never explained - it just did shoot holy beams, so accepted it. I suppose this could have done with clearing up, but I didn't mind. I did however find it too easy to just rely on the cross and to kill enemies before they could reach me.

The game has a moral choice system which is then linked in with the upgrade system. You could 'Absolve' enemies to save them from hell and send them to heaven, or 'Punish' them (via a quick time event), to condemn them forever to the inferno. This would then give you good or bad experience which would unlock possible upgrades. To purchase these upgrades you'd have to spend souls that you've collected by killing enemies, the bigger the enemy the more souls you get for killing them.

The game also has puzzles which you have to figure out to move on, these puzzles usually require pushing a box to stand on and are not too taxing on the mind. However it can be confusing because the graphics make it hard to see where you have to put things.

Throughout the game you'll be required to perform quick time events, to either escape death in a certain cut scene or to kill a boss. They are also used against certain enemies, but it's the same every time, so it lost its fun by the third or fourth time. They are quite easy to figure out as the button you press corresponds to what that button would do in-game, for instance pressing A would make you jump, or X would use your scythe.

Along your descent you will meet 'shades' which are the spirits of infamous historic people. Again these can be absolved or punished. This was an interesting addition to the game.

The graphics in the game are temperamental. I felt that during game-play graphics were not as good as they could have been. However the cut scene visuals i thought were fantastic. during game-play, the environments look really good as do the backgrounds. My favourite part of the game visually was where you are about to enter the city of Dis, and the camera draws back and upwards, further and further and further until it shows you the scale of your task. This really took my breath away for a second and really enjoyed the idea. It shows how big Hell is and it makes you appreciate the ferocity of it.

I also enjoyed the cartoon-like cut-scenes, they helped move the story on and shed light on Dante's past, which in turn aided me to understand why Dante is in this situation. I enjoyed the lava rivers of Styx, Phlegethon, Acheron, and Cocytus as it tied in with the fiery image of hell.

The enemies that you face look good, although there are only six or seven different kinds. Although i was disappointed that each type of enemy looked exactly the same, whereas in a bigger game, such as Halo, grunts come in several different colours. Maybe this was done on purpose, to show that each are the same, but I still feel it brings monotony.

Fire visuals are poor though and as the game is based in Hell, fire is quite abundant, so I would have hoped Visceral Games would have sat down and put a little more effort into it.

The audio of the game is very impressive, with piercing screams and frightened souls of the dammed often ringing out. There are climbable walls that you must use to progress, but these walls are actually the bodies of people, who moan and scream as you climb past them. it's very eery, and very powerful.

The voice acting is good too, Dante sounds desperate to find Beatrice, whilst she seems hypnotised and distance. The bosses sound evil in their own individual ways. Additionally, the score of the game is very very impressive and in certain parts I just sat there and admired it.

The game-play is basic, it's a hack n slash, so it isn't difficult to pick up. However, my one major gripe of this game was the difficulty level. I started on medium as I do on most games and I found it too difficult. Being as medium is the second of four difficulties, (hard and really hard follow it) I can only assume that the hardest difficult is, well, Hell. Therefore I turned the difficulty (reluctanty) down to easy, wherein the game become just that, too easy. The jump was too vast. I tried the game on hard and it was near impossible. Medium difficulty needed to be more accessible.

The problem with the difficulty was exacerbated by the save system. The game would only allow you to save the game at points where it wanted. So you could spend ages trying to do one point but realised if you quit now, you couldn't start again from the last checkpoint, you had to go back to your last save. I really don't understand why the game doesn't autosave at each checkpoint.

The game is a fairly easy 1000 gamerscore. There isn't any difficulty requirement so you can do your playthrough on casual. There are a quite a few collectables, but if you scour most corners you should find most of them, still there are one or two that are really out of sight, so you have to know where to look. There is also the requirement to maximise your good or bad side. There doesn't appear to be enough to experience to do both in one playthrough.

Overall I enjoyed Dante's Inferno, I enjoyed the idea, the mythology, the artwork and the sheer vastness of the game's depiction of hell. I quite liked the hacking and slashing and how collecting souls enabled you to upgrade. Only the difficulty, lack of autosave and the in-game graphics lets it down.

Ratings:
Audio: 4/5 - I loved the soundtrack, the voice acting was decent, although in game sounds could have been better.
Graphics/Visual: 3.5/5 - Nothing special in game, but the cutscenes do you really good. The art work is very impressive, it depicts a classic view of hell.

Gameplay: 4/5 - Hack n Slash is good fun, but the game is let down by the harsh difficulty and save system.
Achievements: 4.5/5 Shouldn't take you too long, maybe on a higher difficulty you get more experience so two play-throughs may not be needed.

Overall: 4/5 - well worth a look, a good game